News
Drawn & Quarterly Founder Chris Oliveros Steps Down as Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
Chris Oliveros, founder of North American comics and manga publisher Drawn & Quarterly, told the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail on Friday that he will step down as publisher and editor-in-chief. Oliveros is stepping down to focus on his own comics career.
Associate publisher peggy Burns and creative director Tom Devlin, Oliveros' longest-serving co-workers, will take over the company. Burns will act as publisher and Devlin as executive director. Oliveros will still remain with the company as a contributing editor.
Oliveros founded Drawn & Quarterly in 1989, and he published the company's first title, a 32-page black-and-white comic, in spring 1990. Drawn & Quarterly now has 19 employees, but Oliveros told The Globe and the Mail that for much of the company's existence it "was, essentially, a one-person operation." In June the publisher will move to a larger space.
Drawn & Quarterly has published many works by manga pioneers Shigeru Mizuki and Yoshihiro Tatsumi, including Mizuki's NonNonBâ, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, Kitaro, and Showa: A History of Showa Japan. The company will publish Mizuki's Hitler manga sometime between 2015-2016. Drawn & Quarterly has also published Tatsumi's Fallen Words, Black Blizzard, Good-Bye, The Push Man and Other Stories, Abandon the Old in Tokyo, and A Drifting Life manga. The company has also published Ōji Suzuki's A Single Match, Seiichi Hayashi's Red Colored Elegy, Susumu Katsumata's Red Snow Imiri Sakabashira's The Box Man, and Tadao Tsuge's Trash Market manga.
Drawn & Quarterly is debuting its 800-page anthology Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics and Graphic Novels (pictured above right) at this weekend's Toronto Comic Arts Festival. The festival is hosting manga artists Gengoroh Tagame (The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame: Bara Master) and Aya Kanno (Otomen).
Source: ICv2
